


Baptized

by Redembe



Category: The Blacklist (TV)
Genre: M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-19
Updated: 2018-01-19
Packaged: 2019-03-06 22:21:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13420827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Redembe/pseuds/Redembe
Summary: Raymond is haunted by recent events.





	Baptized

“Killing me won’t protect Elizabeth.”

“It won’t hurt her either. You betrayed my trust. You’ve lied to me for over twenty years about your motives. How can I continue to let you live when you know what you know?”

The silence in the forest was strange. In real life there had been the rustling of leaves and singing of birds. The silence was what let him know he was dreaming. In the dream, things always played differently.

“Raymond, listen to me,” Kate pleaded, trying a different tact, “You must know that I was only looking out for her. You and I have the same goals when it comes to Elizabeth. I remember a time when you promised to stay out of her life. Not to interfere. I did nothing when you decided to present yourself to the FBI. I waited and I watched and I continued to support you in your endeavors. But when it became apparent that it was YOU she needed protection from I took action. Isn’t that what you would have done? Had our roles been reversed? What if it had been me that had put her in danger?”

“You did,” Raymond answered shortly, ignoring the sharp stab of truth in her words. “You know I cannot abide that.” He felt the gun in his hand though he didn’t remember drawing his weapon. The weight of it felt comforting. Final.

It seemed that Dream Kate had nothing to say to that. The gun shot was the only sound in the silent wood. He watched her body fall again. For the thousandth time. But this time he went closer, his subconscious mind correcting the mistake he should never have made the first time. He bent low and reached down with his left hand to check her pulse, gun still clenched in his right, finger loose on the trigger. As he touched her neck, the flesh still warm, he could see the blood and bits of bone on her scalp. 

The hand that gripped his wrist was a surprise. It was every time in the dream. He reacted instinctively, firing two quick shots into the head before she could do much more than wrap her fingers around his arm. The hand fell away. Heart hammering, he reached again, this time confirming that there was no pulse, no life. But something niggled at him. The hair on the head had changed. The color was wrong. With a lurching sickness that stole his breath, he watched his shaking left hand brush the hair away from the still features. Elizabeth’s dull, lifeless eyes staring up at him in accusation sent him screaming into wakefulness.

For a moment he couldn’t focus on anything but keeping the contents of his last meal from making an encore appearance. There had been many nights when the effort was unsuccessful. He snatched breaths like he’d been drowning, still seeing his daughter’s lifeless eyes staring back at him. He pulled his knees up to his chest, not remembering sitting up in bed, but now realizing he’s kicked off all of the covers on his side, and wrapped his arms around his legs, resting his forehead on his knees. A bright spot of warmth settled in the middle of his back and rubbed in small circles. He swallowed until he couldn’t feel the lump in his throat.

“I should have let her kill me.”

The rubbing paused but didn’t stop. Dembe remained silent. He knew that Raymond knew how he felt about this whole debacle.

“Or expose me,” Ray finished, turning to look at his bedmate finally.

Dembe sighed. 

“I know. You don’t have to go through it again,” Ray said. He sounded exhausted and sad.

“Your instinct for self-preservation may be the death of us all.” A soft smile and a brief scratching of fingernails along his spine softened the accusation.

“You think I should tell her.” His voice held a note of accusation. Part of him wanted a fight. An argument would be just the thing to clear the rest of the guilty cobwebs from his mind. 

“Raymond, I think that you will do as you please and justify it to yourself later.” 

Red flinched a bit at that and straightened his back, putting scant inches between his skin and Dembe’s comforting hand. Dembe sighed.

“I can’t be anything but what I am, Dembe,” he said hotly, his voice rising a bit. 

Dembe refused to rise to the bait. “We both know that’s an excuse. You’re an adaptable man, Raymond.” Dembe chuckled when he felt Ray stiffen beside him. “Admit it, you won’t give Elizabeth the full picture because you are scared that she will cut you out of her life for good this time.”

“It’s a problem,” Ray conceded through gritted teeth.

The bed shook as Dembe let out a loud guffaw. “Is it that painful to admit fear? I still remember the day you agreed to take me as a lover. You were scared then too, and for the same reasons.”

“This is worse. Liz has a thousand reasons to mistrust me where you had none. My only fear with you was that I would shatter your belief that I was some kind of kind-hearted savior! This is different. You know how I am…” He trailed off.

“Yes, once you are committed to something you don’t do it by halves, do you?”

“But you still think I’m making the wrong choice.”

Dembe shrugged eloquently. They’d been over this ground many many times in the past six years. Ray sank back into the bed, retrieving the covers and rolling to wrap his arm around Dembe’s waist, head on the younger man’s shoulder. Dembe dropped a reflexive kiss on his smooth scalp. 

“I wish I could be the person you want me to be.”

“You don’t need to be anyone but who you are, Raymond. I’m under no delusions about the person I fell in love with.”

“How do you do it?” Ray asked, propping his chin on Dembe’s shoulder so he could get a glimpse of the other man’s expression.

“Do what?” 

“How can you honestly hold no judgement against me for the things I’ve done?”

Dembe was quiet for a moment, not looking at him, an introspective expression on his face. “You judge enough for both of us.”

Dembe’s words settled in his mind and heart like a balm. This was why he would… why he COULD never do to Dembe what he’d done to Kate. He would let the other man completely destroy him before he would do anything to harm his light in the darkness. They lay in the silent darkness, breathing together, for long minutes. 

“Make love to me, Dembe,” the whispered words were barely audible, “make me forget. Just for a little while.”

Dembe didn’t respond right away and for a moment he was sure the other man had fallen asleep. But then he felt the large body shift. A warm hand cupped the front of his shoulder, pushing him over onto his back. Dembe rose above him like a dark mountain, his body blocking out what faint light filtered in from the street outside. For a moment he could see his own sadness reflected in the dark eyes of his lover before love and lust turned them hot with desire.

“Yes,” Dembe breathed into his mouth, taking him in a kiss that wiped out pain with passion.

He wanted his young lover to consume him. The only time he truly felt clean in this world was when he could feel that solid weight on top of him, the hot tongue playing alongside his own, the thick, powerful force of Dembe’s cock claiming him. 

“You are so full of it,” Dembe chuckled, biting down on his earlobe reproachfully. 

Had he said that out loud? He must have. “Not quite yet,” he responded. Momentary embarrassment covered by humor.

He felt Dembe’s low, rumbling laughter against his throat where the other man was alternately using teeth and tongue to great effect. He stretched his head back to encourage Dembe to stay there longer, and found himself mapping the play of muscles along his lover’s back as he moved. Dembe was crouched above him, their only points of contact being his mouth on Ray’s body and Ray’s hands on his. He closed his eyes and enjoyed the sensations his young lover was creating as he licked, nibbled and sucked his way down Ray’s torso. When he reached the older man’s shorts he hooked his fingers under the waist band and Ray obediently lifted his hips so Dembe could slide them off. When he felt Dembe’s heat recede from over his body he looked up. His young lover was kneeling between his spread legs watching him and stroking his erection through his boxers. His other hand held a tube of lubricant which he tossed onto the bed next to Ray’s right hand.

“Do it. I want to watch.” 

Feeling hypnotized by Dembe’s dark gaze, Ray took the tube and without looking away squeezed a generous amount into his hand, letting it run down over his fingers. Slowly, he pulled his legs up, tilting his pelvis so the reach wasn’t so far. He watched Dembe’s face as he stretched his opening, fingers playing skillfully around the sensitive aperture. The angle was all wrong for deep penetration but he stretched his outer muscles until he was easily able to move three fingers in and out. 

Dembe watched with hooded eyes as his lover prepared himself to be entered. He was something of a voyeur and he liked feeling his body get hot and his cock get harder in anticipation of claiming the hole his partner was readying. As Ray worked, he divested himself of his shorts and jacked himself lazily using the lube and the lightest touch he could stand. He felt the tension build between them. He knew if he made Ray wait long enough he could get the older man to beg. Something he never heard him do in any other circumstance. But tonight wasn’t about that. It was about connecting and comforting and keeping his troubled lover from going off the deep end. 

When it seemed that Ray was just on the brink of asking for what he so desperately needed, Dembe reached down and moved his hand away from his body. He propped Ray’s legs up on his arms as he entered the other man. Going slow. Asking him to feel every minute shift and change in his muscles as they accepted Dembe’s cock.

“Good,” Ray gasped, reaching up to cup his lover’s face in his hands. 

Dembe turned to kiss an exposed wrist, enjoying the slow claiming of Ray’s body.

When they were fully joined, he stopped and for a long few seconds they were locked together in stillness. Their emotional connection, as always, much greater than the physical one.

“Move, please.”

Dembe heard the whispered words. He adjusted so that Ray could wrap his legs around his slim waist and bent to kiss the other man as he began thrusting. His long, slow strokes seemed to go on forever. He was in no hurry. In their many years together as partners they had probably had sex in every way two men could invent. But these were the times he cherished. The times when he could give back a little of what Raymond had given him over the years. Support. Comfort. A shelter from the storm. 

After a while though the needs of his body could not be denied. Almost beyond his control, his hips picked up a faster rhythm. His body answering the call of absolute pleasure. He listened to Ray’s grunts and moans and felt each one thrum through his flesh and center in the place where he and his lover were joined. Reaching down, he began to stroke Ray’s cock in time to their loving.

“Oh yes, that’s perfect. I’m almost there…” Ray’s words trailed off into a series of curses and grunts that rose in volume until Dembe milked his orgasm from him. Ray tightened on his lover’s cock but Dembe rode through it. 

“I’m not done yet,” he said, pumping harder into his lover, bumping over the other man’s prostate to give him some extra jolts of pleasure. “You good?”  
Ray hummed and stretched his arms above his head, lazily pumping his hips to meet Dembe’s measured thrusting. “I’ll just lay here and enjoy the show,” he said, giving the younger man a half grin.

Dembe gave a slightly feral smile. “God, I love this,” he said, beginning to thrust harder, throwing his head back and adjusting their position so he had more leverage. 

Ray knew he’d be sore tomorrow but it was worth it. He felt lighter. The horrible dream from earlier receding to just a bad memory. This was what mattered. This. Right here. He could lose it all tomorrow, but as long as he had Dembe to remind him that he was still worth something he’d be alright.


End file.
